The Nigerian education system at all levels has remained patiently bookish, incapable of moving the nation forward, a professor of Education Psychology, Shehu Jimoh, has said.

He spoke in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital when he presented a paper at one of the activities organised by the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU, Kwara State branch) to mark the institution’s 50th anniversary.

The topic of the lecture was: "Fifty years of university education in Nigeria: So far, so what?"

Jimoh said: "Our education system at all levels has not achieved the objectives for which they were set up. It has not changed radically from the type we inherited from the colonial era. It remains bookish with very minimal attention paid to the raining of the hands in addition to the training of the head.

"There is no correlation between what the students learn (if we call that learning) and what they need to function effectively in their respective communities. There is a craze for certificates, mere paper qualifications without the concomitant skills and competences. While the number of universities and student enrolment are increasing rapidly, there is no corresponding quality-assurance measures put in place. This is why we turn out thousands of graduates every year without equipping them to find their way through the conceptual landscape of the knowledge-driven economy of the 21st century."

He linked these problems to dearth of a comprehensive blueprint detailing the focus for development.

"Without such a philosophy on national development, our efforts in the education sector cannot yield desired results. The university teacher needs to know where we are going as a people and the kind of Nigerians we expect the school to produce, especially against the background of the loud dissonance between the values promoted by the school and those sponsored by the larger society outside school.

"The same basic factor also accounts for why we have all along been bedeviled by the twin factors of poor policy formulation and poor policy implementation, especially those that affect the principle and practice of education. The learning institutions at all levels, especially our universities, have become mere examination centres.

"The summary of what I have been struggling to say so far is that our education policy, both in its formulation and implementation, has not been adequate in producing citizens who can function effectively in the world of work outside school."